Shady Hollow

November 8, 2021
The various animals who make up the community of Shady Hollow might as well be human in the pseudonymous Black’s disappointing debut and series launch. For example, the panda named Sun Li, who runs the local Chinese restaurant, has a backstory that could apply, without any changes, to a person. Sun Li was once a “respected surgeon,” until the death, during a routine operation, of the prime minister’s son. He lost his license and joined a monastery before settling in Shady Hollow to serve vegetarian fare. The placid community is filled with other animals who act like people and generally live in peace. Then the Otto Sumpf, a cantankerous toad, turns up dead in the pond, belly up with a knife in his back. This shattering crime is probed by reporter Vera Vixen, a fox, whose amateur sleuthing eventually leads to the truth. Inadequate worldbuilding is fatal to engagement with a pedestrian plot. There’s not much to recommend this one.

November 15, 2021
Under the fig-leaf Black pseudonym, newcomers Jocelyn Cole and Sharon Nagel introduce an animals-only village in which members of many species coexist, except when they're killing each other. Nobody much liked Otto Sumpf, but nobody can imagine who disliked the toad enough to stab him in the back and dump him into a pond. The mystery deepens when Solomon Broadhead, the adder who serves as Shady Hollow's medical examiner, announces that Otto has been poisoned as well, presumably by something introduced into the bottle of plum wine foxy reporter Vera Vixen found near his body. Tracing the bottle to its likely source, the Bamboo Patch vegetarian restaurant, she learns from owner Sun Li, a giant panda with a medical background, that the likely agent was heartstill, a little of which goes a long way. Of the two bears in the local police, Chief Theodore Meade is as usual out past his depth, and the paw prints at the crime scene have led Deputy Orville Braun to arrest crooked raccoon Lefty, who's obviously innocent of this particular crime. The killer meanwhile moves on to bigger game, wealthy sawmill owner Reginald von Beaverpelt, who survives one murder attempt thanks to Sun Li but not a second, leaving Shady Hollow on shaky financial ground. Although it's clear that Reginald has been carrying on with rest-home aide Ruby Ewing, the authors mercifully avoid any lurid details of beaver-sheep sex. Instead, intrepid Vera, the most charming figure here, dutifully checks alibis and interviews suspects who draw more clearly on human than animal stereotypes. A series debut that retains many of the conventions of a village cozy, just more broadly drawn, like a greeting card.

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